I know that I can't cover the whole of missionary theology here, and I know that I don't know enough of it or of the Spirit to even pretend to, but here's what I want (and feel I need) to offer to the conversation about calling and missions work.
Somehow, in my personal experience, calling and missions have been divorced from our relationship with Christ. Missions work and callings are for pastors, for self-sufficent, extroverted men who know how to bring people to Jesus. As I consider my current situation (temporary grad-school drop-out heading to Russia to do 'missions work'), I'd like to state that there was no directive from God that said, 'You're ready for missions! I'd like to send you to Russia. Hop to it!' There was no fire from God that made me weak in my knees, no tears of repentance to my ignorance of the world.
There is, however, a Voice that says, 'Come with me. Do you trust me? Do you believe that I am enough and that I am faithful?' I am weak in my knees and in my heart when I consider raising support--both financially and spiritually. I weep for the pain--the pain of our humanity, our collective need to know Christ to be complete, the cry of desiring to be release from bondage. I pray desperate prayers of the burdened, saying, Lord, I am young, I am inexperienced, and I know that I don't know you half as well as I should. How can you send me?
'Calling' is not made up of spreadsheets. Calling is not a career choice. Calling is not an excericise in creative thinking, asking 'How can I imitate Jesus?' Calling is a walk. Calling is a relationship. Calling is part of every day. Calling is following Jesus in whatever it is that he is asking of you in a moment in time. And for me, in this moment in time, Jesus is asking me to take him at his word, inviting me to discover that he is deeply, abidingly faithful, that he is enough, and that he is Lord. And it is for that reason I go to Russia, because of the pain in that country that I know that HE can heal. Because it asks me to trust radically in his provision, and to trust that he knows who I am better than I do.
Missions work CANNOT be done without the Holy Spirit. Missions work is *fundamentally* HIS work. Missions work is not building houses. Missions work is not teaching English. Missions work is not translating Bibles, it is not preaching on the beaches to any listening ear. Missions work is GOD's work of redemption and healing and saving; it is only by his grace that we are invited along for the journey. We are first and foremost HIS partner. A missionary's life is not split up into a vertical relationship with God and a horizontal relationship with our neighborhood. A missionary's life is an arc, where the vertical and the horizontal are intimately connected. A missionary must be continually watching for the Wind of the Spirit, listening for the Voice of the Spirit. A missionary must have the heart and the mind of Christ. And that is not just a way to say 'a gentle and humble heart.' A missionary MUST be indwelled with Christ Himself through His Holy Spirit.
What a humble calling. What a challenge to be surrendered to Him. What a privilege to be called to work alongside him.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Humility
As I grow older and begin to try to find my way in the "real world," I find it hard to be teachable. The pressure to figure it out and to get going somewhere prevents me from listening well to God and his Truth. That kind of listening takes time and is done in quiet places, and it can't be done with charts and lists. I find, therefore, monks process of entering the monastery encouraging. I think I read somewhere that the initial process takes 4-6 years. I'm encouraged by the way that that kind of discernment is given that much time. In this time of discernment in my own life, to which I am giving a year, not even focused exactly, I tend to feel pangs of guilt for not knowing where I'm going. And that's hard for me. I always feel a certain sense of pride that through most of college, I knew exactly what I was doing. I never did that whole "change your major 7 times" thing. I declared sophomore year, and never changed. There was a period of a few weeks junior year when I wanted to be an english major, but only because I was tired of problem solving: I wanted to read books and write about them and think about things other than integrals and metabolic pathways and atoms. And as I'm considering things like mission (which I never, ever thought of before), I am frustrated by the sense that the people around me in ministry always seemed to know this path. It's encouraging, therefore, to know that even people who have the desire to spend their lives in the monastic lifestyle spend years listening to the call of God and trust the order above them to be discerning with them.
Another place where God is humbling me is in regards to the issues I have with megachurches. I tend to be skeptical and harsh when it comes to giant churches with cushy seats full of white, middle-class Americans. But I have to acknowledge that I began my church life at Suburbia Megachurch. In the beginning, it was good: I was involved with the youth group, I had friends, I did those church retreats that I heard about, and I was learning lots about Jesus. But in the later years, there was some drama in the youth group, and it colored my remaining time there and my visits back there during my college breaks. I even toyed with the idea of finding a new church for holidays back at my parents'. However, the past few times I've been back to Suburbia Megachurch, God has used it to remind me of where I've been: that my first experiences in worship were there, how I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to find 1 Timothy 5:12. My walk started there. The first time I started to realize this, it floored me. God began to bring back the color to the picture of my high school life that I had left in grey-scale.
But God wasn't done. I had been intending on returning to Holland in time to go to Smaller Church this Sunday. I was looking forward to it; a feeling that's been missing for a while until I found Smaller Church. However, that didn't work out, so I conceded to go to Suburbia Megachurch instead. I wasn't particularly thrilled, but I went anyway. I tried to be brave and sit in the floor seating area but encountered stares at the ends of rows with empty seats in the middle, so I retreated to my traditional balcony area, which was also full. I finally found and asked for space at the very top of the balcony. After trying to worship, I sat down to listen to Suited Pastor's sermon projected on the screen so everyone could see. And I found that I had a hard time listening. I had no reason to trust the people around me, no reason to trust Suited Pastor. I had no reason to listen to what he was saying, except for the fact that he was speaking the Word. I listened well enough that I recognized that. In that recognition, I tried harder to listen, to really listen. And in my listening, I realized that Suited Pastor was a man, responding to God's call, the way I'm a woman discerning God's call. I realized that Suited Pastor was just a man called to preach the gospel to America's middle class. And what a hard demographic to preach to. I realized just how counter-cultural the gospel was to this demographic, and I sat in amazement at the potential held in those walls. Here was a church that had the people and the resources to do significant Kingdom work in a way that Smaller Church and Progressive City Storefront Churchplant didn't. Not to say that either church's work is any more or less impactful or important. Only to say that here was a church, despite it's prosperity, that continued to bring the gospel to the people, trusting in God's Word and Spirit, and was doing it's best to manage their numbers (and, based on the bulletin, seemed to be doing it well).
The further along I walk down this road, the more I learn how much I need to be humbled. This isn't going to be easy, but I know that it is worth it.
Another place where God is humbling me is in regards to the issues I have with megachurches. I tend to be skeptical and harsh when it comes to giant churches with cushy seats full of white, middle-class Americans. But I have to acknowledge that I began my church life at Suburbia Megachurch. In the beginning, it was good: I was involved with the youth group, I had friends, I did those church retreats that I heard about, and I was learning lots about Jesus. But in the later years, there was some drama in the youth group, and it colored my remaining time there and my visits back there during my college breaks. I even toyed with the idea of finding a new church for holidays back at my parents'. However, the past few times I've been back to Suburbia Megachurch, God has used it to remind me of where I've been: that my first experiences in worship were there, how I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to find 1 Timothy 5:12. My walk started there. The first time I started to realize this, it floored me. God began to bring back the color to the picture of my high school life that I had left in grey-scale.
But God wasn't done. I had been intending on returning to Holland in time to go to Smaller Church this Sunday. I was looking forward to it; a feeling that's been missing for a while until I found Smaller Church. However, that didn't work out, so I conceded to go to Suburbia Megachurch instead. I wasn't particularly thrilled, but I went anyway. I tried to be brave and sit in the floor seating area but encountered stares at the ends of rows with empty seats in the middle, so I retreated to my traditional balcony area, which was also full. I finally found and asked for space at the very top of the balcony. After trying to worship, I sat down to listen to Suited Pastor's sermon projected on the screen so everyone could see. And I found that I had a hard time listening. I had no reason to trust the people around me, no reason to trust Suited Pastor. I had no reason to listen to what he was saying, except for the fact that he was speaking the Word. I listened well enough that I recognized that. In that recognition, I tried harder to listen, to really listen. And in my listening, I realized that Suited Pastor was a man, responding to God's call, the way I'm a woman discerning God's call. I realized that Suited Pastor was just a man called to preach the gospel to America's middle class. And what a hard demographic to preach to. I realized just how counter-cultural the gospel was to this demographic, and I sat in amazement at the potential held in those walls. Here was a church that had the people and the resources to do significant Kingdom work in a way that Smaller Church and Progressive City Storefront Churchplant didn't. Not to say that either church's work is any more or less impactful or important. Only to say that here was a church, despite it's prosperity, that continued to bring the gospel to the people, trusting in God's Word and Spirit, and was doing it's best to manage their numbers (and, based on the bulletin, seemed to be doing it well).
The further along I walk down this road, the more I learn how much I need to be humbled. This isn't going to be easy, but I know that it is worth it.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
You said, ask and I'll give the nations to you...
Two weeks ago, after quite possibly the most awkward interview I've ever been through and apparently lengthy reference calls (I got to hang out with the wife of one of my references and she said that he was on the phone for 45 minutes!), I was invited to teach overseas with Teach Overseas.
With confirmation in prayer and through others, I accepted last week. Which means....I'M GOING TO RUSSIA IN 8 MONTHS!
As nervous as I am to go overseas, I know that it is the right thing for me to do. As daunting as it seems to raise support, I know that God will provide.
I feel like this is the next step in my discipleship. I feel like I won't be able to give him adequate praise until I experience his provision, until I take this leap of faith. I want and need to see him work, to give him the opportunity to reveal himself to me in this way. I need to put myself in a position where can show himself to me outside of the personal realm of my heart. Just as the priests had to step foot into the Jordan before the Lord parted it (Joshua 3:13), I have to step into places of uncertainty.
I am eager for this opportunity to take this step of faith. It fills me with joy. Not necessarily happiness persay, because I am certainly anxious about many aspects of this trip, but there is a welling joy in my heart knowing that I am following my God, wherever he leads.
With confirmation in prayer and through others, I accepted last week. Which means....I'M GOING TO RUSSIA IN 8 MONTHS!
As nervous as I am to go overseas, I know that it is the right thing for me to do. As daunting as it seems to raise support, I know that God will provide.
I feel like this is the next step in my discipleship. I feel like I won't be able to give him adequate praise until I experience his provision, until I take this leap of faith. I want and need to see him work, to give him the opportunity to reveal himself to me in this way. I need to put myself in a position where can show himself to me outside of the personal realm of my heart. Just as the priests had to step foot into the Jordan before the Lord parted it (Joshua 3:13), I have to step into places of uncertainty.
I am eager for this opportunity to take this step of faith. It fills me with joy. Not necessarily happiness persay, because I am certainly anxious about many aspects of this trip, but there is a welling joy in my heart knowing that I am following my God, wherever he leads.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Slowing Down the Whirlwind
When I set out to create this blog, my intent was to be a place to write about all solid stuff that would come out of my times spent in Scripture (in various ways), or reflections on articles I still want this blog to be encouraging, even challenging. It hasn't taken quite that shape lately. Even as I write these opening sentences, I realize the importance of what I'm going to describe about my life lately.
So let's start by describing what, exactly, my life looks like right now, and how it's gotten there over the past few weeks:
I decided to move to Holland into an apartment on 12th street. Five days before I would have to move out of my apartment in Lansing, my roommate calls me with some less than stellar news that she might not be looking for a roommate after all. So I find myself a third of the way packed (past the point of no-return, but the end still nowhere in sight), without a place to move to in five days time in a town 100 miles away. The job that I had set my sights on doesn't respond to my resume or return my phone call (the way they said they would).
It's now about 4 weeks later. I am living on 16th street, and I have a good part-time job. It's been a long story of one step forward, three steps back. But in every instance when I've taken those three steps back and I'm stranded, something comes along to give me a little bit of hope. They've been days when I'm frustrated and scared, and I say, Okay God, what do you want from me? And then, the next day, I get a little ray of sunshine. It's been like following breadcrumbs.
You would think after the way I've seen God provide all this for me, after the way I've seen God pave my way to Urbana, after the way I was able to afford IVLI when it cost more than what I had to my name, that I would be so grateful and hopeful for how this current adventure that I've found myself in is going to play out. I'm back where I want to be and feel at home in, and I get to see how God might use me to answer the prayers I've been crying about for Hope College.
My bills still cost more than what I make, my apartment is not unpacked, I don't know where I'm going to go to church, I don't have friends to hang out with, I'm worried about the roommate who's going to move in next week. I'm worried that I'm being absolutely ridiculous by even THINKING about missions/ministry work. I'm scared to send out reference forms for volunteering with Hope IV. I'm excited to hear back from Teach Overseas, but nervous that they'll actually "hire" me--I'd have to raise almost $5,000.
I don't feel qualified to be asking questions about my calling. I don't feel qualified to be applying for ministry opportunities, whether at Hope or in Russia. I can't even knock on my neighbor's door to ask to borrow a mixer, so how am I supposed to go renew campus? Some people are perfectly content to "worship love and personal dignity." How do I combat love with love?
I went to a prayer meeting at Engedi this evening, and while someone was praying for me, they used this picture of having one foot on the solid rock and the other in the shifting sand. The solid rock doesn't feel very solid when you aren't standing on it completely. It just feels in the way. But I know, I know that when I am standing in His Temple, in His Courts, when I am reading the Word like Oliver, asking, "Please, sir, can I have some more?" that life steadies. That strength is in my veins, peace is in my heart, and words are in my mouth.
It's only when those things are true that I can dream with the vision of God: campus renewal, joy from mourning, freedom for the oppressed, the very earth being cared for: darkness pushed back. I've been trying to figure everything out on my own, including myself, denying the inherent fact that I cannot redeem anything. My pride has kept me from seeking the very one that has the Authority and Power to redeem all those things, and would take this weight from my shoulders.
Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night. -Psalm 1:1-2
So let's start by describing what, exactly, my life looks like right now, and how it's gotten there over the past few weeks:
I decided to move to Holland into an apartment on 12th street. Five days before I would have to move out of my apartment in Lansing, my roommate calls me with some less than stellar news that she might not be looking for a roommate after all. So I find myself a third of the way packed (past the point of no-return, but the end still nowhere in sight), without a place to move to in five days time in a town 100 miles away. The job that I had set my sights on doesn't respond to my resume or return my phone call (the way they said they would).
It's now about 4 weeks later. I am living on 16th street, and I have a good part-time job. It's been a long story of one step forward, three steps back. But in every instance when I've taken those three steps back and I'm stranded, something comes along to give me a little bit of hope. They've been days when I'm frustrated and scared, and I say, Okay God, what do you want from me? And then, the next day, I get a little ray of sunshine. It's been like following breadcrumbs.
You would think after the way I've seen God provide all this for me, after the way I've seen God pave my way to Urbana, after the way I was able to afford IVLI when it cost more than what I had to my name, that I would be so grateful and hopeful for how this current adventure that I've found myself in is going to play out. I'm back where I want to be and feel at home in, and I get to see how God might use me to answer the prayers I've been crying about for Hope College.
My bills still cost more than what I make, my apartment is not unpacked, I don't know where I'm going to go to church, I don't have friends to hang out with, I'm worried about the roommate who's going to move in next week. I'm worried that I'm being absolutely ridiculous by even THINKING about missions/ministry work. I'm scared to send out reference forms for volunteering with Hope IV. I'm excited to hear back from Teach Overseas, but nervous that they'll actually "hire" me--I'd have to raise almost $5,000.
I don't feel qualified to be asking questions about my calling. I don't feel qualified to be applying for ministry opportunities, whether at Hope or in Russia. I can't even knock on my neighbor's door to ask to borrow a mixer, so how am I supposed to go renew campus? Some people are perfectly content to "worship love and personal dignity." How do I combat love with love?
I went to a prayer meeting at Engedi this evening, and while someone was praying for me, they used this picture of having one foot on the solid rock and the other in the shifting sand. The solid rock doesn't feel very solid when you aren't standing on it completely. It just feels in the way. But I know, I know that when I am standing in His Temple, in His Courts, when I am reading the Word like Oliver, asking, "Please, sir, can I have some more?" that life steadies. That strength is in my veins, peace is in my heart, and words are in my mouth.
It's only when those things are true that I can dream with the vision of God: campus renewal, joy from mourning, freedom for the oppressed, the very earth being cared for: darkness pushed back. I've been trying to figure everything out on my own, including myself, denying the inherent fact that I cannot redeem anything. My pride has kept me from seeking the very one that has the Authority and Power to redeem all those things, and would take this weight from my shoulders.
Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night. -Psalm 1:1-2
Friday, October 15, 2010
Hijacked
I love it when the Holy Spirit decides to interrupt your day and suddenly it's 2.5 hours later...
I definitely was going to get some application writing done, call my Dad, and instead, I decided to pray for a bit and then it's 8:30, the sun has gone down, and I haven't eaten dinner. And I could definitely keep chillin' with Jesus for the rest of the night, but I have some pressing things to do...like turn on lights and put on a sweatshirt and finish this application! And feed myself.
I'll post an update of what's going on a little later. Suffice to say that I'm learning the art of surrender.
I definitely was going to get some application writing done, call my Dad, and instead, I decided to pray for a bit and then it's 8:30, the sun has gone down, and I haven't eaten dinner. And I could definitely keep chillin' with Jesus for the rest of the night, but I have some pressing things to do...like turn on lights and put on a sweatshirt and finish this application! And feed myself.
I'll post an update of what's going on a little later. Suffice to say that I'm learning the art of surrender.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
The Appalling Inefficiency of Sabbath
Posted At : September 24, 2010 7:39 PM
Related Categories: Sabbath
I am currently on sabbatical living among and observing various expressions of Christian community. In the future I will blog about what I am discovering regarding Christian community – particularly among the marginalized, but at the moment I’d like to consider the appalling inefficiency of rest.
If I confess that God made humans with intention and foresight (“fearfully and wonderfully” as the Psalmist puts it), I must either concede that God created terribly inefficient creatures, or that there must be some purpose in dormancy which is built into creation. I think it is safe to say that every living thing has regular periods of sleep, hibernation, dormancy or some kind of inactivity.
Humans appear to be genetically programmed to go dormant every single day of our lives one third of the time. If anyone tried to market a computer or car or appliance that only worked 2/3rds of the time it would be laughed right off the market (Mac users please exercise restraint in tossing jabs at us PC users). Since God neither “slumbers nor sleeps,” (Psalm 121:4) and since we are made in the image of our Creator, it stands to reason that there was some purpose for God deviating from making a creature that does not require sleep. Seems as though humans are not like God in that critical respect – that of 24-7 work (Jn 5:16-17).
We do know, however, that this sleepless God chose to “Sabbath” after making the universe. The resting of God was completely voluntary. It was not because God was exhausted after all that ex nihilo “Let there be …” stuff (Gen. 2:3). God chose rest – perhaps to give us an example. Because in addition to building dormancy into creation, God commanded that humans were not to work one full day in seven. Genetically we’d already lost our ability to function 1/3 of the time, but then God had to go and tell us to do no work one seventh of the remaining time that we could otherwise be productive.
Add to all this the dozens of feast and festival days – several of which included the command to “do no work,” and you’ve got a workforce which is, either by design or command, inactive about half of the time! The computer game “Age of Empires,” where we get to play God, would be pretty boring if your entire population did nothing half the time.
Now with a labor force which is only available to work 50% of the time you’d think God would be pretty insistent about snappy productivity during those few waking hours of work each year. There’s plenty of being fruitful, multiplying, subduing the earth, and having dominion over every living thing to get done (Gen. 1:28). Oddly, however, God commands an agrarian Israel to a sabbatical year. No planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding and harvesting for a full year – not just once in your life, but every seven years. If an adult worked for 50 years of their life, five of those years would be sabbatical years.
So here’s what I am only just beginning to learn about the beauty of regular periods of dormancy.
Identity: Our work can get perversely attached to our sense of identity and worth. We can very easily begin to think that we are what we do. I believe that the genetic and Biblical call to inactivity aids us in separating our identity from our activity. Our personhood is not defined by our work.
Trust: Think of it. Every year agrarian Israel relied on a good harvest to live through the winter, spring and summer before another harvest was available. But God told them not to plant anything for one full season in every seven. That means that after they’d harvested crops in year six, they had to survive somehow until the harvest came in year eight. This required dependence on God.
For a variety of reasons, in my sabbatical period we have experienced a diminishment in income and an increase in expense. We are learning how to trust God for daily bread in deeper ways. While here in the UK, where housing costs (along with many other things) are more expensive, we are dependent upon the generosity of communities to provide for us. We are being stripped of our sense of financial independence and self-sufficiency.
Measurability: For many in the West and certain parts of Asia productivity is measurable. Results, outcomes, growth and production are things toward which we strive (I find this a bit less so in many African and Latin American cultures). Sabbath denies us the indulgence of measuring our outcomes. We must satisfy ourselves with internal growth, more space for intimacy with God and relationship with others. These things are hard to quantify. We must learn to be content with things which cannot be counted – deeper encounters with God, time to spend with a friend, rediscovering what it means to be a member of a family, and space simply to “be.”
While I have not quite yet entered into a state of transcendent, sabbatical bliss, I have begun to slow down just a little and am learning to separate my sense of self from my work, to grow my dependence upon God and others, and to deny myself the measurability of productivity.
http://www.urbana.org/blogs/blog.main.leastofthese.cfm
(Italics mine)
Posted At : September 24, 2010 7:39 PM
Related Categories: Sabbath
I am currently on sabbatical living among and observing various expressions of Christian community. In the future I will blog about what I am discovering regarding Christian community – particularly among the marginalized, but at the moment I’d like to consider the appalling inefficiency of rest.
If I confess that God made humans with intention and foresight (“fearfully and wonderfully” as the Psalmist puts it), I must either concede that God created terribly inefficient creatures, or that there must be some purpose in dormancy which is built into creation. I think it is safe to say that every living thing has regular periods of sleep, hibernation, dormancy or some kind of inactivity.
Humans appear to be genetically programmed to go dormant every single day of our lives one third of the time. If anyone tried to market a computer or car or appliance that only worked 2/3rds of the time it would be laughed right off the market (Mac users please exercise restraint in tossing jabs at us PC users). Since God neither “slumbers nor sleeps,” (Psalm 121:4) and since we are made in the image of our Creator, it stands to reason that there was some purpose for God deviating from making a creature that does not require sleep. Seems as though humans are not like God in that critical respect – that of 24-7 work (Jn 5:16-17).
We do know, however, that this sleepless God chose to “Sabbath” after making the universe. The resting of God was completely voluntary. It was not because God was exhausted after all that ex nihilo “Let there be …” stuff (Gen. 2:3). God chose rest – perhaps to give us an example. Because in addition to building dormancy into creation, God commanded that humans were not to work one full day in seven. Genetically we’d already lost our ability to function 1/3 of the time, but then God had to go and tell us to do no work one seventh of the remaining time that we could otherwise be productive.
Add to all this the dozens of feast and festival days – several of which included the command to “do no work,” and you’ve got a workforce which is, either by design or command, inactive about half of the time! The computer game “Age of Empires,” where we get to play God, would be pretty boring if your entire population did nothing half the time.
Now with a labor force which is only available to work 50% of the time you’d think God would be pretty insistent about snappy productivity during those few waking hours of work each year. There’s plenty of being fruitful, multiplying, subduing the earth, and having dominion over every living thing to get done (Gen. 1:28). Oddly, however, God commands an agrarian Israel to a sabbatical year. No planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding and harvesting for a full year – not just once in your life, but every seven years. If an adult worked for 50 years of their life, five of those years would be sabbatical years.
So here’s what I am only just beginning to learn about the beauty of regular periods of dormancy.
Identity: Our work can get perversely attached to our sense of identity and worth. We can very easily begin to think that we are what we do. I believe that the genetic and Biblical call to inactivity aids us in separating our identity from our activity. Our personhood is not defined by our work.
Trust: Think of it. Every year agrarian Israel relied on a good harvest to live through the winter, spring and summer before another harvest was available. But God told them not to plant anything for one full season in every seven. That means that after they’d harvested crops in year six, they had to survive somehow until the harvest came in year eight. This required dependence on God.
For a variety of reasons, in my sabbatical period we have experienced a diminishment in income and an increase in expense. We are learning how to trust God for daily bread in deeper ways. While here in the UK, where housing costs (along with many other things) are more expensive, we are dependent upon the generosity of communities to provide for us. We are being stripped of our sense of financial independence and self-sufficiency.
Measurability: For many in the West and certain parts of Asia productivity is measurable. Results, outcomes, growth and production are things toward which we strive (I find this a bit less so in many African and Latin American cultures). Sabbath denies us the indulgence of measuring our outcomes. We must satisfy ourselves with internal growth, more space for intimacy with God and relationship with others. These things are hard to quantify. We must learn to be content with things which cannot be counted – deeper encounters with God, time to spend with a friend, rediscovering what it means to be a member of a family, and space simply to “be.”
While I have not quite yet entered into a state of transcendent, sabbatical bliss, I have begun to slow down just a little and am learning to separate my sense of self from my work, to grow my dependence upon God and others, and to deny myself the measurability of productivity.
http://www.urbana.org/blogs/blog.main.leastofthese.cfm
(Italics mine)
Sunday, September 19, 2010
When you follow where God leads, you never know where you'll go
So it's been a little more than three weeks since I've turned in my office keys (though my laser lab sneakers are still in the basement; I'd like to get those back...). I thought it was about time for an update.
I'm learning a lot. I haven't learned it well enough to expound upon it, but I know that God is showing me a lot through this experience. I keep finding places where my pride lurks, discovering how stubborn I am.
I'm intending on leaving Lansing to move back to Holland, where my vision for Hope students drives me to pray the biggest prayers I have ever prayed. I don't have a job yet, I might have an apartment. But the craziest thing is that I'm back on Urbana's website, considering filling out my resume. I would not even been thinking about this if I were still in school. I'm stepping out of this realm of science and absolute facts, I'm leaving my cozy little lab, with my chemicals and my books, for a world of possibility that I am entirely sure that I will not be able to wrap my mind around. I feel like Moses, like Solomon.
Take a breath and hold on tight/Spin around one more time/And gracefully fall back in the arms of grace -Lifehouse
I'm learning a lot. I haven't learned it well enough to expound upon it, but I know that God is showing me a lot through this experience. I keep finding places where my pride lurks, discovering how stubborn I am.
I'm intending on leaving Lansing to move back to Holland, where my vision for Hope students drives me to pray the biggest prayers I have ever prayed. I don't have a job yet, I might have an apartment. But the craziest thing is that I'm back on Urbana's website, considering filling out my resume. I would not even been thinking about this if I were still in school. I'm stepping out of this realm of science and absolute facts, I'm leaving my cozy little lab, with my chemicals and my books, for a world of possibility that I am entirely sure that I will not be able to wrap my mind around. I feel like Moses, like Solomon.
Take a breath and hold on tight/Spin around one more time/And gracefully fall back in the arms of grace -Lifehouse
Friday, August 20, 2010
Counter Cultural Hurts
Here I am. Living into the deep reality that alignment with Jesus forces other things out of alignment.
Here I am. Asking the question, "What matters most to me?" And finding that the answer is a deep, deep longing to be found in the arms of my Lover. To know who I am in his eyes, to know his voice, to function in the way that when I press into his heart, he presses back, and when he presses back, I have what I need to do that which he has called me to. And when that work--that work-- has me broken and exhausted, I run back to his arms and find sanctuary.
Here I am. Having found that grad school is frustrating all those things, and feeling short-circuited, I have, as of this week, left grad school for a year.
I have mixed feelings about this. It is a mixture of excitement-for all the things I can see God growing in me through this; guilt-for needing the time, for actually taking that time, for leaving the lab group and university that I was so sure I was called to and that somehow by leaving I'm not being a good witness; anxiety-for not having a paycheck for the time being, for how it reflects on me professionally.
But what it comes down to is a matter of idolatry, and of healing. I am excited and challenged by the idea of introducing myself to someone "Hi. I'm Rachel." Not "Hi. I'm Rachel. I'm a chemistry grad student at State. I am eager to find out what happens when I let myself just be a Daughter. I need to learn rhythms of grace. The damage I've accumulated over the years has never had a chance to heal, and the ways I've tried to fix myself are proving their uselessness and the ways they are proving to do more damage as they shut me out from the only One who knows how to heal. This cleansing and healing work is going to be hard, but I when I remember that I'm not the one performing the surgery, the less daunting this year seems.
So here I am. Here I am, Lord. Here I am.
Here I am. Asking the question, "What matters most to me?" And finding that the answer is a deep, deep longing to be found in the arms of my Lover. To know who I am in his eyes, to know his voice, to function in the way that when I press into his heart, he presses back, and when he presses back, I have what I need to do that which he has called me to. And when that work--that work-- has me broken and exhausted, I run back to his arms and find sanctuary.
Here I am. Having found that grad school is frustrating all those things, and feeling short-circuited, I have, as of this week, left grad school for a year.
I have mixed feelings about this. It is a mixture of excitement-for all the things I can see God growing in me through this; guilt-for needing the time, for actually taking that time, for leaving the lab group and university that I was so sure I was called to and that somehow by leaving I'm not being a good witness; anxiety-for not having a paycheck for the time being, for how it reflects on me professionally.
But what it comes down to is a matter of idolatry, and of healing. I am excited and challenged by the idea of introducing myself to someone "Hi. I'm Rachel." Not "Hi. I'm Rachel. I'm a chemistry grad student at State. I am eager to find out what happens when I let myself just be a Daughter. I need to learn rhythms of grace. The damage I've accumulated over the years has never had a chance to heal, and the ways I've tried to fix myself are proving their uselessness and the ways they are proving to do more damage as they shut me out from the only One who knows how to heal. This cleansing and healing work is going to be hard, but I when I remember that I'm not the one performing the surgery, the less daunting this year seems.
So here I am. Here I am, Lord. Here I am.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Not of this world
I've been pondering some things lately. I've wanted to blog about them, but none of them seemed to be things to warrant a whole blog to unpack them. But I still want to share.
1. Observations in Exodus 34:
God isn't just a jealous god. His NAME is Jealous. Like capital J Jealous. Bam.
We get the whole seventh day of rest thing. But we give the excuse, oh, but in today's world, we just don't have time. The world just doesn't work that way anymore. Sabbath-keeping is old-fashioned, and besides, it's the old law, so we don't need it. So you know, maybe when I get an easy week, then I'll do that. 1. Let's get real here. There is never going to be an easy week. 2. He specifies, "Even during the plowing season and harvest you shall rest." ie, even if it's finals week, you must rest. Kind of changes things a bit, doesn't it.
2. We often think of obedience as 'doing.' So when we bring that term into the church, we regard obedience as going where and doing what Jesus tells us to do, ie, going to Russia, doing ministry things, not sleeping around, etc. But I'm finding that my test of obedience right now is to NOT do. WAIT. STAY. DWELL. Who knew that NOT doing something could be so hard?
3. Sin=stalking ex-husband. (See Romans 7) Oh, InterVarsity, how I love us. And how it's like having family everywhere across the country.
4. Lately, I've been confronted with the sheer absurdity of the gospel. I mean, this guy named Jesus died and then FREAKIN ROSE AGAIN. The dude didn't stay dead! And my science brain can't make sense of that, wants to reject it, but the deep part of me cannot. I cannot make sense of it, but my heart and my soul knows it like my body registers a needle in my foot as pain. The deep part of me knows Jesus in a way that can't be understood through reason the way we like. "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." [C.S. Lewis] (Check out this article that I found after I wrote this: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/22298-jesus-gospel-is-not-a-formula)
1. Observations in Exodus 34:
God isn't just a jealous god. His NAME is Jealous. Like capital J Jealous. Bam.
We get the whole seventh day of rest thing. But we give the excuse, oh, but in today's world, we just don't have time. The world just doesn't work that way anymore. Sabbath-keeping is old-fashioned, and besides, it's the old law, so we don't need it. So you know, maybe when I get an easy week, then I'll do that. 1. Let's get real here. There is never going to be an easy week. 2. He specifies, "Even during the plowing season and harvest you shall rest." ie, even if it's finals week, you must rest. Kind of changes things a bit, doesn't it.
2. We often think of obedience as 'doing.' So when we bring that term into the church, we regard obedience as going where and doing what Jesus tells us to do, ie, going to Russia, doing ministry things, not sleeping around, etc. But I'm finding that my test of obedience right now is to NOT do. WAIT. STAY. DWELL. Who knew that NOT doing something could be so hard?
3. Sin=stalking ex-husband. (See Romans 7) Oh, InterVarsity, how I love us. And how it's like having family everywhere across the country.
4. Lately, I've been confronted with the sheer absurdity of the gospel. I mean, this guy named Jesus died and then FREAKIN ROSE AGAIN. The dude didn't stay dead! And my science brain can't make sense of that, wants to reject it, but the deep part of me cannot. I cannot make sense of it, but my heart and my soul knows it like my body registers a needle in my foot as pain. The deep part of me knows Jesus in a way that can't be understood through reason the way we like. "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." [C.S. Lewis] (Check out this article that I found after I wrote this: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/22298-jesus-gospel-is-not-a-formula)
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Rainforest
It is 5:30 in the morning.
And I have realized something wonderful:
God is still God whether it is 1am and your day is done and over and heading to bed or it is 3:30am and your alarm is going off because you have to be at work at 5am to run an experiment. It doesn't change who God is.
God is still God whether I am an undergrad at Hope College or a grad student at Michigan State University.
God is still God whether I am alone and unsure or I am surrounded by friends and comfortable.
It does not matter the path that I am on, the rocks and potholes in the pavement, or if there is pavement at all. There is one Truth, and that is that there is one true God, and He reigns. Period. The rest is just noise. And the beauty of it is that we can get caught up in the noise and get stressed out, or we can listen for the melody hidden beneath it all. A melody called "Redemption." It is a love song written in the rainforest.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. -Ps 73:26
And I have realized something wonderful:
God is still God whether it is 1am and your day is done and over and heading to bed or it is 3:30am and your alarm is going off because you have to be at work at 5am to run an experiment. It doesn't change who God is.
God is still God whether I am an undergrad at Hope College or a grad student at Michigan State University.
God is still God whether I am alone and unsure or I am surrounded by friends and comfortable.
It does not matter the path that I am on, the rocks and potholes in the pavement, or if there is pavement at all. There is one Truth, and that is that there is one true God, and He reigns. Period. The rest is just noise. And the beauty of it is that we can get caught up in the noise and get stressed out, or we can listen for the melody hidden beneath it all. A melody called "Redemption." It is a love song written in the rainforest.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. -Ps 73:26
Monday, May 31, 2010
Science and Calling
Something that one of my professors at Hope said a while ago has been rather stuck in my head:
"I wonder if Satan doesn't use the hardships of grad school to keep us out of the academy"
along with something that someone else (it may have been my pastor? I'm not sure) said
"Persecution comes part and parcel of being a Christian. If you aren't being persecuted, I would question your walk".
As I read about Newton, and the scientists of his era, I am reminded of the creativity inherent in science that seems to be missing. It is interesting to be referred to as a "practitioner" of science, especially when you think of doctors of all kinds getting their degrees before they can open a practice. When I take my articles and my textbooks outside and walk around, things seem lighter, like this was why I entered grad school in the first place: to find a place to explore science. I didn't go to grad school to get a degree. I went to grad school to learn and to explore.
Here is where I am considering scientific scholarship a calling (maybe not My Calling, but a calling nonetheless). I think we toss that word around a lot, but given the persecution I've been facing in the past few months, and the things that remind me why I'm a scientist, I wonder if, in fact, just as the Lord has been steadying me, this is not precisely where I am supposed to be. Not just one of those things where God just opens lots of doors and lets you choose which door to go through, the way he did with Urbana, but this is exactly what I should be doing.
I think what has been adding to the stress is that the persecution hits precisely where it hurts _me_--not other people, but persecution tailored to me. Not the persecution I see other people facing, with deadlines they are struggling to meet, with advisors that are cruel, but, in the absence of deadlines and hired by the rare advisor that actually cares, with internal struggles regarding emotions and sense of purpose and place. That instead of deadlines and advisors breathing down my neck, I have cinder block walls and The Institution trying to steal the creativity and intrigue that make me a scientist, like the ones of old. They observed something in their life that sparked their curiosity and proposed ideas about the phenomenon. The ones that truly saw science as an art, as an exploratory endeavor, instead of the scientists I feel surrounded by where the universe is meant to be solved and mastered, taken apart and put back together.
I think about what God did at IVLI, the particular ways he touched me. There were so many, but the one way that seems to bind the rest together, the undercurrent to that whole month and everything that happened, was that I was not meant to hide. I have spent so many years hiding in corner, shutting up because that was my place and I had nothing worth saying. I wonder that if instead of my plans to hole myself away in a lab because I had to, Jesus gave me confidence to do more than that in my lab; to remind my fellow scientists of the vastness of the universe, the humility and awe that science should inspire. That maybe I will call people to return to the roots of scientific research. To remind them and show them that the values we are asked to exemplify, like integrity, respect, and colleagiality, are values Jesus calls us to as well.
There's that word again: Return. I deeply feel like God is calling us to return to Himself; my soul cries out for it. I wonder if that is not everything my life is about: calling people to return. O, that I may have such a calling...!
Something else I've been thinking about (thanks to books like 'Courage and Calling' and 'Following Jesus in the 'Real' World' and other assorted articles and references to the Karate Kid), and taking great comfort in, is the way that our jobs can serve as avenues of discipleship. The question Jesus has been asking me is not, 'Will you go for me?' but 'Will you stay with me?'. Something that has been echoing in my heart since Urbana (maybe earlier?) is 'SEEK me, THEN follow.' Find me here, meet me here. I've been coming back to the idea of God having all of my days written in his book (Ps 139:16). Regardless of the trials of the days, they are still days written in his book, and only he knows where the days will take me. So my question I have to answer is not 'Do I want to do science for the rest of my life?' (which I don't know) but 'Can I learn and grow by doing science here?' and that answer is a resonant 'Yes.' So, I will stay in this land and grow here, now, in this way. And I think that's all Jesus ever asks us to do, grad school or otherwise. 'What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' (Micah 6:8)
"I wonder if Satan doesn't use the hardships of grad school to keep us out of the academy"
along with something that someone else (it may have been my pastor? I'm not sure) said
"Persecution comes part and parcel of being a Christian. If you aren't being persecuted, I would question your walk".
As I read about Newton, and the scientists of his era, I am reminded of the creativity inherent in science that seems to be missing. It is interesting to be referred to as a "practitioner" of science, especially when you think of doctors of all kinds getting their degrees before they can open a practice. When I take my articles and my textbooks outside and walk around, things seem lighter, like this was why I entered grad school in the first place: to find a place to explore science. I didn't go to grad school to get a degree. I went to grad school to learn and to explore.
Here is where I am considering scientific scholarship a calling (maybe not My Calling, but a calling nonetheless). I think we toss that word around a lot, but given the persecution I've been facing in the past few months, and the things that remind me why I'm a scientist, I wonder if, in fact, just as the Lord has been steadying me, this is not precisely where I am supposed to be. Not just one of those things where God just opens lots of doors and lets you choose which door to go through, the way he did with Urbana, but this is exactly what I should be doing.
I think what has been adding to the stress is that the persecution hits precisely where it hurts _me_--not other people, but persecution tailored to me. Not the persecution I see other people facing, with deadlines they are struggling to meet, with advisors that are cruel, but, in the absence of deadlines and hired by the rare advisor that actually cares, with internal struggles regarding emotions and sense of purpose and place. That instead of deadlines and advisors breathing down my neck, I have cinder block walls and The Institution trying to steal the creativity and intrigue that make me a scientist, like the ones of old. They observed something in their life that sparked their curiosity and proposed ideas about the phenomenon. The ones that truly saw science as an art, as an exploratory endeavor, instead of the scientists I feel surrounded by where the universe is meant to be solved and mastered, taken apart and put back together.
I think about what God did at IVLI, the particular ways he touched me. There were so many, but the one way that seems to bind the rest together, the undercurrent to that whole month and everything that happened, was that I was not meant to hide. I have spent so many years hiding in corner, shutting up because that was my place and I had nothing worth saying. I wonder that if instead of my plans to hole myself away in a lab because I had to, Jesus gave me confidence to do more than that in my lab; to remind my fellow scientists of the vastness of the universe, the humility and awe that science should inspire. That maybe I will call people to return to the roots of scientific research. To remind them and show them that the values we are asked to exemplify, like integrity, respect, and colleagiality, are values Jesus calls us to as well.
There's that word again: Return. I deeply feel like God is calling us to return to Himself; my soul cries out for it. I wonder if that is not everything my life is about: calling people to return. O, that I may have such a calling...!
Something else I've been thinking about (thanks to books like 'Courage and Calling' and 'Following Jesus in the 'Real' World' and other assorted articles and references to the Karate Kid), and taking great comfort in, is the way that our jobs can serve as avenues of discipleship. The question Jesus has been asking me is not, 'Will you go for me?' but 'Will you stay with me?'. Something that has been echoing in my heart since Urbana (maybe earlier?) is 'SEEK me, THEN follow.' Find me here, meet me here. I've been coming back to the idea of God having all of my days written in his book (Ps 139:16). Regardless of the trials of the days, they are still days written in his book, and only he knows where the days will take me. So my question I have to answer is not 'Do I want to do science for the rest of my life?' (which I don't know) but 'Can I learn and grow by doing science here?' and that answer is a resonant 'Yes.' So, I will stay in this land and grow here, now, in this way. And I think that's all Jesus ever asks us to do, grad school or otherwise. 'What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' (Micah 6:8)
Monday, May 10, 2010
Made to Worship
You and I were made to worship
You and I are called to love
You and I are forgiven and free
-Chris Tomlin
We were made to worship (Isaiah 43:7; Romans 1). We are worshipers. It's what lies at our core. If my memory serves me well, I don't see God (either through the prophets or through Jesus) asking his people to worship, but instead to turn their worship towards him. All of Hosea is about a woman running after other lovers, I think of Isaiah and Zechariah and Jeremiah (I may be getting names wrong) pleading with Israel to return; Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 about true worshipers. It's not that we don't know how to worship, and God is trying to teach us how to worship. It's that we give worship to other things.
But what is worship? I'm not sure it's something you can define. I remember discussing this very thing in a track for worship leaders at an IV conference a few years ago. Most of us would agree that worship is not just church music. Worship includes prayer, it includes obedience. They way I answered (which apparently earned me the temporary nickname of "Jenga") was that it was a posture. Worship is a posture (certainly on an internal level, possibly also in a physical manner) in which you pour out to God and you allow God to pour into you.
So then if we were created to worship, we will, by nature, place ourselves in positions to expend energy towards something, as well as positions in which we are poured into. We are guilty of idolatry when we place ourselves in positions where we are offering and surrendering to that which is not God. It's hard to think of our idols because we think of idols like little cows made out of gold or something. But really the sin wasn't that the Israelites made a little figurine. The sin was that they trusted that little figurine for what it could never offer: hope, security. Our idols are what we rely on to give us hope and security. Performance. Wealth. Ourselves. Other people. These things are not bad things. But they can become idols.
We were made to worship. We are going to worship something. The question is where is our worship focused?
Lord, forgive us for the times when we have surrendered our worship to idols, things that are not you, that could never be you, but we insist on placing our trust in them all the same. Free us from the bondages, God. Free us from the bondages that come from serving foreign gods that never promise our safety, that never promise us love, but merely cheap thrills to lure us deeper into darkness and slavery. Lord! We cry out for release of those chains and bondages!! We cry out for the release of these shackles of shame and guilt and darkness. Invade our hearts, shine brightly into our darkness, lead us out of our self-made prisons, and heal the wounds our chains have left and our captors have dealt us. Walk us into your light, Father. We give you highest praise; may it be from the deep places of our hearts.
You and I are called to love
You and I are forgiven and free
-Chris Tomlin
We were made to worship (Isaiah 43:7; Romans 1). We are worshipers. It's what lies at our core. If my memory serves me well, I don't see God (either through the prophets or through Jesus) asking his people to worship, but instead to turn their worship towards him. All of Hosea is about a woman running after other lovers, I think of Isaiah and Zechariah and Jeremiah (I may be getting names wrong) pleading with Israel to return; Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 about true worshipers. It's not that we don't know how to worship, and God is trying to teach us how to worship. It's that we give worship to other things.
But what is worship? I'm not sure it's something you can define. I remember discussing this very thing in a track for worship leaders at an IV conference a few years ago. Most of us would agree that worship is not just church music. Worship includes prayer, it includes obedience. They way I answered (which apparently earned me the temporary nickname of "Jenga") was that it was a posture. Worship is a posture (certainly on an internal level, possibly also in a physical manner) in which you pour out to God and you allow God to pour into you.
So then if we were created to worship, we will, by nature, place ourselves in positions to expend energy towards something, as well as positions in which we are poured into. We are guilty of idolatry when we place ourselves in positions where we are offering and surrendering to that which is not God. It's hard to think of our idols because we think of idols like little cows made out of gold or something. But really the sin wasn't that the Israelites made a little figurine. The sin was that they trusted that little figurine for what it could never offer: hope, security. Our idols are what we rely on to give us hope and security. Performance. Wealth. Ourselves. Other people. These things are not bad things. But they can become idols.
We were made to worship. We are going to worship something. The question is where is our worship focused?
Lord, forgive us for the times when we have surrendered our worship to idols, things that are not you, that could never be you, but we insist on placing our trust in them all the same. Free us from the bondages, God. Free us from the bondages that come from serving foreign gods that never promise our safety, that never promise us love, but merely cheap thrills to lure us deeper into darkness and slavery. Lord! We cry out for release of those chains and bondages!! We cry out for the release of these shackles of shame and guilt and darkness. Invade our hearts, shine brightly into our darkness, lead us out of our self-made prisons, and heal the wounds our chains have left and our captors have dealt us. Walk us into your light, Father. We give you highest praise; may it be from the deep places of our hearts.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Prayer
If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Matthew 21:22
I think we miss a crucial point in this. We know this verse, so we pray about a lot of things.
But I think we forget to ask.
I think we spend so much time praying over a situation that we forget to really ask God for something. And I think asking requires something more than a question mark. It requires acknowledging and understanding that you do not have. There is no point in asking if you already have it.
Acknowledging that you do not have requires humility. Asking the Lord for something requires a need. It requires confessing a need that we, ourselves, cannot meet. We do not like admitting that we cannot meet a need. We are okay when we pray about things are clearly not under our control. We pray for favor in an interviewer's eyes. We pray for open doors and direction when we aren't sure what to do. These are all good things to pray for. But they rarely require humility. Prayers with humility require an honest assessment of ourselves in the light of the situation. Prayers out of this assessment are the humble ones, the ones that require God to move. They require God to move because we have recognized that we cannot meet our own needs, sometimes in places that we feel that we should not need. Those are the hard prayers.
But it is in these hard prayers that we experience God's extravagant love for us. It is in these hard prayers that we find the Love of the One who came and dwelt among us.
I think we miss a crucial point in this. We know this verse, so we pray about a lot of things.
But I think we forget to ask.
I think we spend so much time praying over a situation that we forget to really ask God for something. And I think asking requires something more than a question mark. It requires acknowledging and understanding that you do not have. There is no point in asking if you already have it.
Acknowledging that you do not have requires humility. Asking the Lord for something requires a need. It requires confessing a need that we, ourselves, cannot meet. We do not like admitting that we cannot meet a need. We are okay when we pray about things are clearly not under our control. We pray for favor in an interviewer's eyes. We pray for open doors and direction when we aren't sure what to do. These are all good things to pray for. But they rarely require humility. Prayers with humility require an honest assessment of ourselves in the light of the situation. Prayers out of this assessment are the humble ones, the ones that require God to move. They require God to move because we have recognized that we cannot meet our own needs, sometimes in places that we feel that we should not need. Those are the hard prayers.
But it is in these hard prayers that we experience God's extravagant love for us. It is in these hard prayers that we find the Love of the One who came and dwelt among us.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Walking and Mission: Now
This is the way; walk in it. Isaiah 30:21b
Americans are driven people. Our culture is always looking for the bigger, better, cooler, more extreme, more intense thing. Our success is based on our achievements. We live the first 18 years of our life waiting for our high school graduation. But before you even make it there, from your sophomore year of high school, you are expected to start planning for college. Before you even take your last set of finals, you are supposed to know exactly where you are going to go to school, and of course, the only reason you are going to college is to get a degree in a certain area so that you grow up to be what you always wanted. Hooray! You've made it into college. Now you just have 4 more years until you get to go get a stellar internship or go to graduate school! But of course, along the way, you know that you have to publish papers, get into this society in order to be accepted there. Hooray, I've made it to grad school! Now I've just got 5 (or more...) more years until I can get a job. I have to impress my advisor, I have to join this society, I have to crank out this number of papers, and I have to meet this person and this person and go to this conference so I can meet that potential employer and get that job!
We are always focused on the next thing. We are consumed with the future--and American Christianity is not exempt from this. We are focused on milestones. That first step to find a church. That moment when someone makes a choice to follow Jesus. The moment when one breaks down and confesses a "great and hideous" sin. And, of course, that Call to Missions. We know that phrase in that verse in Matthew: "Go, and make disciples of all nations." We know it well.
As two wonderful people have pointed out to me as I've been wrestling with this whole idea over the past two months, the verb is more accurately translated as "as you go". We make calling this big, huge thing. We make calling out to be something you do in the future, that until God sends fire or something, or if you have the perfect set of skills to do church/ministry/mission work, you don't have A Calling. Os Guinness reminds us that "[o]ur primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him. First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia)." Our Call is to follow Jesus. And I don't mean that one moment when you become a Christian for the first time and call yourself a follower of Jesus. I mean follow in every sense of the word. Follow is not a destination. Follow is not a moment. Follow is a sequence of moments. It is inclusive not just of your future, your Sundays and your Wednesdays, your job, your college choice, what church you belong to (besides, the church is merely a local expression of the Body of Christ; that's a cool post for another time). Following is inclusive of the minutes, of the seconds that you live and breathe now, and our Call is to love Jesus, and to be his hands and his feet, his eyes and his ears, and his pinkies and his elbows now. I might even say that we have to learn how to be his pinkies and his elbows before we learn how to be his eyes and his ears, and we have to learn how to be his eyes and his ears before we can be his hands and his feet (though I'm sure we learn them all in tandem to some degree).
And we will fail. We will fail at following. Not just in those "big" ways, when we confess our unchecked greed, our unbounded sexuality that we have been denying God's say in. We will fail at following. We fail when we don't trust Jesus to be enough for us. To steal a phrase from the lead singer of Tenth Avenue North, we live in a world of cheap thrills. We fail when we replace Jesus' sustaining grace and power and love with the cheap thrills this world offers us. The "big" failures are not the problems. The addictions to pornography, the drive to accumulate wealth at any cost, the consuming need to have a significant other at all times--those are not the problems. The problem is our tendency, as inherently sinful people, to deny in our daily moments that Jesus is enough for all our needs. We fail when we choose our own ways of meeting our needs--for affirmation, for intimacy, for success, for security, instead of trusting Jesus and what he has to offer us and what he calls us to do in our moments.
I remember one Retreat of Silence I had at IVLI after a particularly challenging week. We had gone on our outtrip to Mackinac, and God had shown me more of himself, and more of myself. I was rather a mess. I had a conversation with Jesus that went something like this:
Nothing you could do could ever make me love you less, because you have followed me.
But I can't even follow right!
Don't you think I know that? :)
And so I spent the rest of that ROS learning how to rest with Jesus, in the way you rest with a significant other. When you rest on the couch or in bed together, you don't justify yourselves to each other. You just rest with them. Regardless of how you yelled at each other that day, or neglected each other that week, when you cuddle with each other, you focus on just being with them. And you find the grace in each others' arms.
So before we follow Jesus across the ocean, we have to learn how to stay. We have to learn how to stay when nothing makes sense and the path seems to be going nowhere--or even in the wrong direction. God leads by steps, and we can't tell him what those steps are. This goes against everything our culture tells us: plan for the future now, otherwise you'll never get anywhere. We have to learn how to follow in our moments before we can follow Jesus in our futures. Following is not a goal. Following requires being a disciple. Disciples are not made. Disciples are. Even when Jesus' twelve original disciples were being dense, they were still disciples. The path in the verse I started this blog with is not the goal or the point; the path is not what matters. What matters is that we walk in it. Discipleship is not a goal. Discipleship happens along the way.
For me, personally, I no longer understand why I am in graduate school for chemistry. And that is frustrating to me--even though I now remember that I asked for it when I surrendered my plans to the Living God, time and time again. I'm learning how to live in the reality that God really has removed any sense of right to the control of my life, to be content with that, to surrender each step, to trust God's faithfulness. I'm learning how grad school might just be a grace period. A chance to learn how discipline forms rhythms of work and rest, and a chance for me to not worry about that next step. To realize that I've been blessed with a job that pays me sufficiently, that has flexible hours, and that by definition is exploratory. Most importantly, though, I think, is that it is a chance for me to heal. I very much feel like God is tearing down a lot of things in my life, dredging out hidden idols, and asking me to lean fully upon his grace. At IVLI, God showed me that my greatest strength as a leader is my heart. God also showed me that it is also my greatest weakness, and that it is in need of some major care. Chemistry has nothing to do with my heart; it is a purely intellectual pursuit. So, I do chemistry graduate work while God what he does best: restore. God is teaching me what I have always wanted to teach others: God is more interested in our hearts than what we do.
Americans are driven people. Our culture is always looking for the bigger, better, cooler, more extreme, more intense thing. Our success is based on our achievements. We live the first 18 years of our life waiting for our high school graduation. But before you even make it there, from your sophomore year of high school, you are expected to start planning for college. Before you even take your last set of finals, you are supposed to know exactly where you are going to go to school, and of course, the only reason you are going to college is to get a degree in a certain area so that you grow up to be what you always wanted. Hooray! You've made it into college. Now you just have 4 more years until you get to go get a stellar internship or go to graduate school! But of course, along the way, you know that you have to publish papers, get into this society in order to be accepted there. Hooray, I've made it to grad school! Now I've just got 5 (or more...) more years until I can get a job. I have to impress my advisor, I have to join this society, I have to crank out this number of papers, and I have to meet this person and this person and go to this conference so I can meet that potential employer and get that job!
We are always focused on the next thing. We are consumed with the future--and American Christianity is not exempt from this. We are focused on milestones. That first step to find a church. That moment when someone makes a choice to follow Jesus. The moment when one breaks down and confesses a "great and hideous" sin. And, of course, that Call to Missions. We know that phrase in that verse in Matthew: "Go, and make disciples of all nations." We know it well.
As two wonderful people have pointed out to me as I've been wrestling with this whole idea over the past two months, the verb is more accurately translated as "as you go". We make calling this big, huge thing. We make calling out to be something you do in the future, that until God sends fire or something, or if you have the perfect set of skills to do church/ministry/mission work, you don't have A Calling. Os Guinness reminds us that "[o]ur primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him. First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia)." Our Call is to follow Jesus. And I don't mean that one moment when you become a Christian for the first time and call yourself a follower of Jesus. I mean follow in every sense of the word. Follow is not a destination. Follow is not a moment. Follow is a sequence of moments. It is inclusive not just of your future, your Sundays and your Wednesdays, your job, your college choice, what church you belong to (besides, the church is merely a local expression of the Body of Christ; that's a cool post for another time). Following is inclusive of the minutes, of the seconds that you live and breathe now, and our Call is to love Jesus, and to be his hands and his feet, his eyes and his ears, and his pinkies and his elbows now. I might even say that we have to learn how to be his pinkies and his elbows before we learn how to be his eyes and his ears, and we have to learn how to be his eyes and his ears before we can be his hands and his feet (though I'm sure we learn them all in tandem to some degree).
And we will fail. We will fail at following. Not just in those "big" ways, when we confess our unchecked greed, our unbounded sexuality that we have been denying God's say in. We will fail at following. We fail when we don't trust Jesus to be enough for us. To steal a phrase from the lead singer of Tenth Avenue North, we live in a world of cheap thrills. We fail when we replace Jesus' sustaining grace and power and love with the cheap thrills this world offers us. The "big" failures are not the problems. The addictions to pornography, the drive to accumulate wealth at any cost, the consuming need to have a significant other at all times--those are not the problems. The problem is our tendency, as inherently sinful people, to deny in our daily moments that Jesus is enough for all our needs. We fail when we choose our own ways of meeting our needs--for affirmation, for intimacy, for success, for security, instead of trusting Jesus and what he has to offer us and what he calls us to do in our moments.
I remember one Retreat of Silence I had at IVLI after a particularly challenging week. We had gone on our outtrip to Mackinac, and God had shown me more of himself, and more of myself. I was rather a mess. I had a conversation with Jesus that went something like this:
Nothing you could do could ever make me love you less, because you have followed me.
But I can't even follow right!
Don't you think I know that? :)
And so I spent the rest of that ROS learning how to rest with Jesus, in the way you rest with a significant other. When you rest on the couch or in bed together, you don't justify yourselves to each other. You just rest with them. Regardless of how you yelled at each other that day, or neglected each other that week, when you cuddle with each other, you focus on just being with them. And you find the grace in each others' arms.
So before we follow Jesus across the ocean, we have to learn how to stay. We have to learn how to stay when nothing makes sense and the path seems to be going nowhere--or even in the wrong direction. God leads by steps, and we can't tell him what those steps are. This goes against everything our culture tells us: plan for the future now, otherwise you'll never get anywhere. We have to learn how to follow in our moments before we can follow Jesus in our futures. Following is not a goal. Following requires being a disciple. Disciples are not made. Disciples are. Even when Jesus' twelve original disciples were being dense, they were still disciples. The path in the verse I started this blog with is not the goal or the point; the path is not what matters. What matters is that we walk in it. Discipleship is not a goal. Discipleship happens along the way.
For me, personally, I no longer understand why I am in graduate school for chemistry. And that is frustrating to me--even though I now remember that I asked for it when I surrendered my plans to the Living God, time and time again. I'm learning how to live in the reality that God really has removed any sense of right to the control of my life, to be content with that, to surrender each step, to trust God's faithfulness. I'm learning how grad school might just be a grace period. A chance to learn how discipline forms rhythms of work and rest, and a chance for me to not worry about that next step. To realize that I've been blessed with a job that pays me sufficiently, that has flexible hours, and that by definition is exploratory. Most importantly, though, I think, is that it is a chance for me to heal. I very much feel like God is tearing down a lot of things in my life, dredging out hidden idols, and asking me to lean fully upon his grace. At IVLI, God showed me that my greatest strength as a leader is my heart. God also showed me that it is also my greatest weakness, and that it is in need of some major care. Chemistry has nothing to do with my heart; it is a purely intellectual pursuit. So, I do chemistry graduate work while God what he does best: restore. God is teaching me what I have always wanted to teach others: God is more interested in our hearts than what we do.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Tent Duty
Tent Duty
The crucible of leadership formation
by Alex Kirk
We seldom know in advance what God is going to do with our experience of “tent duty” — those times of seemingly wasted faithful service and waiting. Often, the work God does is subterranean and mysterious.
“Tie your boots impeccably.” —Post-it® note on my dad’s desk
My grandparents were missionaries in Brazil for forty years. The stories they tell are pregnant with the faithfulness and redemptive work of God as they took risks (and made mistakes) in their ministry with Brazilians. My grandfather went to Wake Forest University as part of his preparation for ministry. One summer break he eagerly sought out ministry opportunities to develop his skills and prepare him for mission work, only to come up curiously and frustratingly empty-handed. In the end he gave up his search, and took a job at a cigarette-making plant which was a primary employer in the area—a wasted summer. The next year he finished his schooling, married my grandmother and went to Brazil. Several years into their ministry, a government came into power that was skeptical of foreign missionaries. It cracked down on their operations, restricting them from access to the paper needed to produce Bibles in Portuguese. My grandfather’s experience at the cigarette plant provided this invaluable insight: cigarette paper was the same weight as the paper they were running through their press. The printing presses that the government had tried to shut down were cranked back up and they produced hundreds of Bibles on cigarette paper. As the Bibles were distributed throughout the country, a seemingly wasted summer was wasted no more.
The Place of Preparation
Exodus 33 describes a time full of tension and uncertainty in the story of the Israelites. They had just experienced major failure in the golden calf incident—God is angry, Aaron is foolish, Moses is the hero. As the dust is still settling, the Exodus account pulls back and tells us some things about life among the nomadic Israelites. Specifically, Exodus 33 tells us about the “tent of meeting” and how Moses regularly pitched this tent in order for the people to go to worship God. The tent was available for anyone to meet with God, but when Moses went in, it was particularly spectacular. There is one minor character in Exodus 33 that captures something pivotal about the preparation for leadership illustrated by my grandfather’s story: “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent” (Exodus 33:11).
Tent duty. Joshua is guarding the tent, some distance away from the rest of the camp. Perhaps it was an honor to accompany the tent of meeting, but just as likely there were long stretches of boredom, many hours with no one coming and no one going. Moses is the one who gets to go inside, meeting with God face to face, speaking with him as a man would speak to his friend. Joshua is outside the tent, making sure that sacred things remain safe, that holy things aren’t mistreated. This is the first time in scripture that we meet Joshua, son of Nun. No one might have guessed it then, but soon this same Joshua who spent long days doing tent duty would lead hundreds of thousands of God’s people into the Promised Land. And his character will have been forged during tent duty.
God uses tent duty in the lives and hearts of leaders to develop integrity, to weave the fabric of faithfulness in their souls. Tent duty is unlikely training ground for a king/warrior/prophet, and on the surface it would seem far from practical. It’s not a management seminar, it’s not a military drill, it’s not a speech-writing class. It’s just tent duty. But tent duty will be used by God as he calls Joshua to follow after the leadership of Moses, the man the Scriptures describe as the most humble man on the face of the earth.
We seldom know in advance what God is going to do with our experience of tent duty. Sometimes, as in my grandfather’s story, tent duty is so amazingly redeemed it seems like fiction rather than fact. More often, the work God does is subterranean, meticulous, or, maddeningly, we’re never given a clear explanation of what he’s doing. In any case, we are seldom given a clear explanation while we’re in the midst of tent duty itself. In that respect it is always a faith-stretching exercise. And the string of questions will lead us to the place we nearly always end up if we have the courage or foolishness to follow the trail long enough: do we trust God to be good? Do we believe that he puts us exactly where he wants us? Have we genuinely given all our days to the Lord to have him order them as he sees fit? Do we trust that it’s all for our good and his glory? Embracing tent duty means looking at odd, discouraging or dry seasons of our lives and leaning into the grace of God. It is a reckless abandonment to the goodness and sovereignty of God. He is forever faithful or he does not exist at all; there are no other choices.
Embracing tent duty requires a significant paradigm shift in terms of how we view our lives. When we understand all of life as discipleship and all our various roles and contexts as venues for our discipleship, we find our goals and dreams radically altered. There is a glorious passage in Revelation that has captured my imagination in the last two years: “To him who overcomes . . . I will give him a white stone with a new name written on it” (Revelation 2:17). George MacDonald unpacks this brilliantly: “. . . it is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for only then can he first understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, the completion that determines the name. . . . Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name” (Unspoken Sermons, vol. 1). I, too, am in the process of becoming. Throughout the course of my life I have worn many names and titles. Some were earned, some were given, some were rooted in talents or roles: son, student, awkward, brother, friend, husband, sophomore, gifted, late-bloomer, employee, father, loser, leader. I can find myself becoming so enamored with these titles (or, in darker days, so self-hating) that I am tempted to take up my own stone and carve a permanent name for myself. But only God can give me my true name. All other names, all other titles, must either bow to the name on the white stone or they will be destroyed. Our God is a consuming fire. Tent duty is one of the many instruments of this blessed process of purification.
You may be married, dating, or single, in leadership or at tent duty, a student, working for a company, or at home with kids, all for the sake of forming Christ’s life in you. Jesus, like a good shepherd, leads us down the roads that we need to travel for repentance from our sin and into enjoyment of him. Every major hero in the Old Testament, from Abraham to Joseph to Moses to Joshua to David, experienced some space of life marked by struggle, loneliness, hardship, boredom or waiting. God is more interested in our character development than our career advancement. He is more interested in who we are becoming than what we are producing. He is more interested in our discipleship than our résumé.
Tent Duty in Cube World
The summer after my sophomore year of college, I was privileged to work at Camp Willow Run, a week-long Christian summer camp for grade-school kids. I worked with eight kids who shared a remodeled train car with me for a week. It was hard and rewarding work. The pay, however, stank. The next summer I evaluated my finances (or lack thereof) and decided that I needed to opt for a more lucrative summer job. I moved back to my parents’ home and signed up with a temp agency. Within a couple days I was in a cube going through call center training for a major nationwide bank. I had sold out. Instead of ministering to kids, I was in cube world making money.
My job entailed working with company employees who were having problems with their computers. Bob, a retiree who worked part time at the bank between shuffleboard matches in Tallahassee, would be having problems with his teller computer. He’d call us at the help desk and we would trouble-shoot. If we couldn’t fix it, we’d call the repair folks who would come out on site and do the repairs. I knew next to nothing about computers, but fortunately most of our work was pretty straight-forward: turn it off, turn it back on, good as new, thank you for calling network support.
My first two years of college I had been deeply impressed with several older guys in our fellowship who were quiet and wise. They were the type of servant leaders who listened well, spoke rarely, and when they did speak, everyone listened. I wanted, of course, to be just like them. However, a strange thing happened as I spent eight hours a day on the phone with stressed-out computer users: I discovered that I loved talking with people. I would chat with them about anything and everything that was happening in their worlds: “What was the weather like in New Jersey today?” “Someone from your branch called me about this yesterday; what are you people doing to your computers?” I’d often talk on the phone with them long after their computer was up and running.
I was, and still am, an extravert. This is how God made me, and while it needs redemption and transformation by the Spirit, it is good. Three months of tent duty at a phone bank in cube world taught me things about myself that I would not have learned in the Christian bubble, where I was still too busy trying to wear someone else’s armor.
What is your experience with tent duty? Almost everyone has had some space or season in their lives that at the time seemed pointless, plotless, aimless. How did you respond? What went on in your heart during your period of tent duty? Are you open, at times like these, to the surprising work of the Spirit to shape and mold you? Joshua would soon lead the stiff-necks into battle for the Promised Land. He would preside over the politically toxic task of dividing the conquered land among a group of squabbling malcontents. This work would require valor, integrity and grace. It would also require a deep sense of the direction, work and presence of the God of Moses, Abraham and Isaac. Tent duty was the place where these characteristics were forged in Joshua.
Built-in Tent Duty
Every task and every calling, whether it’s working in cube world or in ministry, has elements of tent duty woven into the job. No work sparkles all the time. I recently took a class on spiritual formation where we were required to keep a spiritual journal to reflect on our readings. I was in the midst of discerning my calling. I had been in campus ministry for eight years and I was getting antsy. Several job opportunities were coming my way and I was wondering if it were time to leave campus. One day I was reflecting in my journal on what God might be teaching me during this process, and I realized that it had very much to do with the tent duty aspects of my work:
I had a great retreat of silence two days ago. I was considering whether the explosion of job opportunities was so that I would see how well-suited I was for campus ministry. I wondered whether this was to lead me to repentance for my “grumbling” about some parts of my work. The scripture I’d been reading talked about lessons from Israel’s history: no idolatry, no sexual immorality and no grumbling. I circled back to that word; there was something for me there. I’ve grumbled most about my parking situation and the long walk to the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. The only way for me to park for free all day is to park and hike a long, long way. I started to consider my response to this walk. The Cary Street walk makes me feel like my work on campus is marginal. The walk through broken glass and beer cans makes me wonder if what I’m doing is valuable. I begin to think that not only is my work marginal, but also that God’s work and his story are secondary. Nothing about the day-to-day operation of the campus administration or faculty seems to take into account either the work of God, or me, his wonderful emissary.
And so I find that my heart is again wrapped around all the wrong things. This walk has cast its spell on me—I think the things of God are peripheral and that I need to be recognized. This is a vital lesson for me no matter what I do. Either I must learn to delight in the humble parts of ministry that serve to ground me, or I will become absorbed in tireless and tiresome self-promotion. Every job has its long walks down Cary Street. There have been times when creative ministry on campus has been more about my own plans and potential glory than God’s will and his praise. I long for my creative energies and big dreams to be drawn from deeper wells. I long for the walk down Cary Street to be the seedbed of humble and holy creativity. Can I learn to embrace the humbler parts of my job—of any job? Can I delight in God’s purifying me as I walk down Cary Street?
For many of us, God enforces a period of tent duty to protect us from an intoxicated love affair with ourselves. For some it is longer than others, in order to deepen us, steep us in perseverance, prepare us for the real work ahead. This kid Joshua, he leads, and does so with great anointing and great power. Joshua is among the few Old Testament heroes who end up untarnished by moral failure. Perhaps Joshua’s near-flawless record is rooted in years and years of tent duty. We need to learn to trust, to wait, to work, to be faithful in the places where God has us. Tent duty is a gift, not only to us but to the people that we will be fortunate to have the opportunity to serve.
When nothing seems to be happening, keep moving. Guard the tent impeccably. You never know what God might be doing with you at the cigarette factory.
_____________
Emphasis placed in the above article are mine.
Graduate school=tent duty. This is exactly what I'm doing. God keeps saying WAIT. And in this waiting, I am growing incredibly frustrated. The temptation is to rush God's timing and to go off and do something crazy. However, the harder temptation to resist is to deny the hope that he has me waiting for a reason. I know a bundle of reasons why: to teach me patience, humility, servant leadership, and radical dependence upon him. To give me space to explore my gifts, to refine my motives, to continue to heal areas of sin. However, this does not make the waiting easier, as this does not keep the temptation to give up at bay. However tempting it was to not return to MSU and stay at Hope doing InterVarsity things, I'm not reckless enough to do something unthought-through, something drastic without a very good reason (ie, walking into my advisor's office and telling him I quit or just not showing up for days in a row). For me, the harder challenge is to trust God's call. For the first time in my life, God has opened such a door for me. For the first time in my life, my heart makes sense. For the first time in my life, I'm excited about something that is not academic--and that's valid. For the first time in my life, my heart matters--my heart, not my brain or my achievements, and for the first time in my life, I have permission to use it! The temptation, in this time of waiting, is to ignore it and toss it all into the garbage can and chalk it up to emotion and naivete.
Peace came today when this scripture was sung in the IHOP prayer room: Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed. (Psalm 25:3)
The crucible of leadership formation
by Alex Kirk
We seldom know in advance what God is going to do with our experience of “tent duty” — those times of seemingly wasted faithful service and waiting. Often, the work God does is subterranean and mysterious.
“Tie your boots impeccably.” —Post-it® note on my dad’s desk
My grandparents were missionaries in Brazil for forty years. The stories they tell are pregnant with the faithfulness and redemptive work of God as they took risks (and made mistakes) in their ministry with Brazilians. My grandfather went to Wake Forest University as part of his preparation for ministry. One summer break he eagerly sought out ministry opportunities to develop his skills and prepare him for mission work, only to come up curiously and frustratingly empty-handed. In the end he gave up his search, and took a job at a cigarette-making plant which was a primary employer in the area—a wasted summer. The next year he finished his schooling, married my grandmother and went to Brazil. Several years into their ministry, a government came into power that was skeptical of foreign missionaries. It cracked down on their operations, restricting them from access to the paper needed to produce Bibles in Portuguese. My grandfather’s experience at the cigarette plant provided this invaluable insight: cigarette paper was the same weight as the paper they were running through their press. The printing presses that the government had tried to shut down were cranked back up and they produced hundreds of Bibles on cigarette paper. As the Bibles were distributed throughout the country, a seemingly wasted summer was wasted no more.
The Place of Preparation
Exodus 33 describes a time full of tension and uncertainty in the story of the Israelites. They had just experienced major failure in the golden calf incident—God is angry, Aaron is foolish, Moses is the hero. As the dust is still settling, the Exodus account pulls back and tells us some things about life among the nomadic Israelites. Specifically, Exodus 33 tells us about the “tent of meeting” and how Moses regularly pitched this tent in order for the people to go to worship God. The tent was available for anyone to meet with God, but when Moses went in, it was particularly spectacular. There is one minor character in Exodus 33 that captures something pivotal about the preparation for leadership illustrated by my grandfather’s story: “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent” (Exodus 33:11).
Tent duty. Joshua is guarding the tent, some distance away from the rest of the camp. Perhaps it was an honor to accompany the tent of meeting, but just as likely there were long stretches of boredom, many hours with no one coming and no one going. Moses is the one who gets to go inside, meeting with God face to face, speaking with him as a man would speak to his friend. Joshua is outside the tent, making sure that sacred things remain safe, that holy things aren’t mistreated. This is the first time in scripture that we meet Joshua, son of Nun. No one might have guessed it then, but soon this same Joshua who spent long days doing tent duty would lead hundreds of thousands of God’s people into the Promised Land. And his character will have been forged during tent duty.
God uses tent duty in the lives and hearts of leaders to develop integrity, to weave the fabric of faithfulness in their souls. Tent duty is unlikely training ground for a king/warrior/prophet, and on the surface it would seem far from practical. It’s not a management seminar, it’s not a military drill, it’s not a speech-writing class. It’s just tent duty. But tent duty will be used by God as he calls Joshua to follow after the leadership of Moses, the man the Scriptures describe as the most humble man on the face of the earth.
We seldom know in advance what God is going to do with our experience of tent duty. Sometimes, as in my grandfather’s story, tent duty is so amazingly redeemed it seems like fiction rather than fact. More often, the work God does is subterranean, meticulous, or, maddeningly, we’re never given a clear explanation of what he’s doing. In any case, we are seldom given a clear explanation while we’re in the midst of tent duty itself. In that respect it is always a faith-stretching exercise. And the string of questions will lead us to the place we nearly always end up if we have the courage or foolishness to follow the trail long enough: do we trust God to be good? Do we believe that he puts us exactly where he wants us? Have we genuinely given all our days to the Lord to have him order them as he sees fit? Do we trust that it’s all for our good and his glory? Embracing tent duty means looking at odd, discouraging or dry seasons of our lives and leaning into the grace of God. It is a reckless abandonment to the goodness and sovereignty of God. He is forever faithful or he does not exist at all; there are no other choices.
Embracing tent duty requires a significant paradigm shift in terms of how we view our lives. When we understand all of life as discipleship and all our various roles and contexts as venues for our discipleship, we find our goals and dreams radically altered. There is a glorious passage in Revelation that has captured my imagination in the last two years: “To him who overcomes . . . I will give him a white stone with a new name written on it” (Revelation 2:17). George MacDonald unpacks this brilliantly: “. . . it is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for only then can he first understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, the completion that determines the name. . . . Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name” (Unspoken Sermons, vol. 1). I, too, am in the process of becoming. Throughout the course of my life I have worn many names and titles. Some were earned, some were given, some were rooted in talents or roles: son, student, awkward, brother, friend, husband, sophomore, gifted, late-bloomer, employee, father, loser, leader. I can find myself becoming so enamored with these titles (or, in darker days, so self-hating) that I am tempted to take up my own stone and carve a permanent name for myself. But only God can give me my true name. All other names, all other titles, must either bow to the name on the white stone or they will be destroyed. Our God is a consuming fire. Tent duty is one of the many instruments of this blessed process of purification.
You may be married, dating, or single, in leadership or at tent duty, a student, working for a company, or at home with kids, all for the sake of forming Christ’s life in you. Jesus, like a good shepherd, leads us down the roads that we need to travel for repentance from our sin and into enjoyment of him. Every major hero in the Old Testament, from Abraham to Joseph to Moses to Joshua to David, experienced some space of life marked by struggle, loneliness, hardship, boredom or waiting. God is more interested in our character development than our career advancement. He is more interested in who we are becoming than what we are producing. He is more interested in our discipleship than our résumé.
Tent Duty in Cube World
The summer after my sophomore year of college, I was privileged to work at Camp Willow Run, a week-long Christian summer camp for grade-school kids. I worked with eight kids who shared a remodeled train car with me for a week. It was hard and rewarding work. The pay, however, stank. The next summer I evaluated my finances (or lack thereof) and decided that I needed to opt for a more lucrative summer job. I moved back to my parents’ home and signed up with a temp agency. Within a couple days I was in a cube going through call center training for a major nationwide bank. I had sold out. Instead of ministering to kids, I was in cube world making money.
My job entailed working with company employees who were having problems with their computers. Bob, a retiree who worked part time at the bank between shuffleboard matches in Tallahassee, would be having problems with his teller computer. He’d call us at the help desk and we would trouble-shoot. If we couldn’t fix it, we’d call the repair folks who would come out on site and do the repairs. I knew next to nothing about computers, but fortunately most of our work was pretty straight-forward: turn it off, turn it back on, good as new, thank you for calling network support.
My first two years of college I had been deeply impressed with several older guys in our fellowship who were quiet and wise. They were the type of servant leaders who listened well, spoke rarely, and when they did speak, everyone listened. I wanted, of course, to be just like them. However, a strange thing happened as I spent eight hours a day on the phone with stressed-out computer users: I discovered that I loved talking with people. I would chat with them about anything and everything that was happening in their worlds: “What was the weather like in New Jersey today?” “Someone from your branch called me about this yesterday; what are you people doing to your computers?” I’d often talk on the phone with them long after their computer was up and running.
I was, and still am, an extravert. This is how God made me, and while it needs redemption and transformation by the Spirit, it is good. Three months of tent duty at a phone bank in cube world taught me things about myself that I would not have learned in the Christian bubble, where I was still too busy trying to wear someone else’s armor.
What is your experience with tent duty? Almost everyone has had some space or season in their lives that at the time seemed pointless, plotless, aimless. How did you respond? What went on in your heart during your period of tent duty? Are you open, at times like these, to the surprising work of the Spirit to shape and mold you? Joshua would soon lead the stiff-necks into battle for the Promised Land. He would preside over the politically toxic task of dividing the conquered land among a group of squabbling malcontents. This work would require valor, integrity and grace. It would also require a deep sense of the direction, work and presence of the God of Moses, Abraham and Isaac. Tent duty was the place where these characteristics were forged in Joshua.
Built-in Tent Duty
Every task and every calling, whether it’s working in cube world or in ministry, has elements of tent duty woven into the job. No work sparkles all the time. I recently took a class on spiritual formation where we were required to keep a spiritual journal to reflect on our readings. I was in the midst of discerning my calling. I had been in campus ministry for eight years and I was getting antsy. Several job opportunities were coming my way and I was wondering if it were time to leave campus. One day I was reflecting in my journal on what God might be teaching me during this process, and I realized that it had very much to do with the tent duty aspects of my work:
I had a great retreat of silence two days ago. I was considering whether the explosion of job opportunities was so that I would see how well-suited I was for campus ministry. I wondered whether this was to lead me to repentance for my “grumbling” about some parts of my work. The scripture I’d been reading talked about lessons from Israel’s history: no idolatry, no sexual immorality and no grumbling. I circled back to that word; there was something for me there. I’ve grumbled most about my parking situation and the long walk to the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. The only way for me to park for free all day is to park and hike a long, long way. I started to consider my response to this walk. The Cary Street walk makes me feel like my work on campus is marginal. The walk through broken glass and beer cans makes me wonder if what I’m doing is valuable. I begin to think that not only is my work marginal, but also that God’s work and his story are secondary. Nothing about the day-to-day operation of the campus administration or faculty seems to take into account either the work of God, or me, his wonderful emissary.
And so I find that my heart is again wrapped around all the wrong things. This walk has cast its spell on me—I think the things of God are peripheral and that I need to be recognized. This is a vital lesson for me no matter what I do. Either I must learn to delight in the humble parts of ministry that serve to ground me, or I will become absorbed in tireless and tiresome self-promotion. Every job has its long walks down Cary Street. There have been times when creative ministry on campus has been more about my own plans and potential glory than God’s will and his praise. I long for my creative energies and big dreams to be drawn from deeper wells. I long for the walk down Cary Street to be the seedbed of humble and holy creativity. Can I learn to embrace the humbler parts of my job—of any job? Can I delight in God’s purifying me as I walk down Cary Street?
For many of us, God enforces a period of tent duty to protect us from an intoxicated love affair with ourselves. For some it is longer than others, in order to deepen us, steep us in perseverance, prepare us for the real work ahead. This kid Joshua, he leads, and does so with great anointing and great power. Joshua is among the few Old Testament heroes who end up untarnished by moral failure. Perhaps Joshua’s near-flawless record is rooted in years and years of tent duty. We need to learn to trust, to wait, to work, to be faithful in the places where God has us. Tent duty is a gift, not only to us but to the people that we will be fortunate to have the opportunity to serve.
When nothing seems to be happening, keep moving. Guard the tent impeccably. You never know what God might be doing with you at the cigarette factory.
_____________
Emphasis placed in the above article are mine.
Graduate school=tent duty. This is exactly what I'm doing. God keeps saying WAIT. And in this waiting, I am growing incredibly frustrated. The temptation is to rush God's timing and to go off and do something crazy. However, the harder temptation to resist is to deny the hope that he has me waiting for a reason. I know a bundle of reasons why: to teach me patience, humility, servant leadership, and radical dependence upon him. To give me space to explore my gifts, to refine my motives, to continue to heal areas of sin. However, this does not make the waiting easier, as this does not keep the temptation to give up at bay. However tempting it was to not return to MSU and stay at Hope doing InterVarsity things, I'm not reckless enough to do something unthought-through, something drastic without a very good reason (ie, walking into my advisor's office and telling him I quit or just not showing up for days in a row). For me, the harder challenge is to trust God's call. For the first time in my life, God has opened such a door for me. For the first time in my life, my heart makes sense. For the first time in my life, I'm excited about something that is not academic--and that's valid. For the first time in my life, my heart matters--my heart, not my brain or my achievements, and for the first time in my life, I have permission to use it! The temptation, in this time of waiting, is to ignore it and toss it all into the garbage can and chalk it up to emotion and naivete.
Peace came today when this scripture was sung in the IHOP prayer room: Indeed, let no one who waits on You be ashamed. (Psalm 25:3)
Monday, March 08, 2010
Hosea/Thornbushes and the Desert
I feel like I'm kicking against my goads, so I'm tired and hurting.
Yet, still, I am grateful for them.
Yet, still, I am grateful for them.
Monday, March 01, 2010
There is a God...and I am not Him
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne... (Isaiah 6:1)
My grace is sufficient for you... (2 Cor 12:9)
Jesus is LORD. I am not. I am not God, and I never will be. No matter how good I've been, how good I am, or how good I ever will be, however hard I try to be perfect, NOTHING I do will EVER make me good enough to be God. I need to remember this. I need to remember to breathe and to let go of my death grip!! that I have on controlling my life.
This is my identity. From page one of Genesis to the last page of Revelation, this is my identity: There is a God. And I am not him.
Be a sinner, and sin boldy. But believe more boldy that Christ is victor. Martin Luther
My grace is sufficient for you... (2 Cor 12:9)
Jesus is LORD. I am not. I am not God, and I never will be. No matter how good I've been, how good I am, or how good I ever will be, however hard I try to be perfect, NOTHING I do will EVER make me good enough to be God. I need to remember this. I need to remember to breathe and to let go of my death grip!! that I have on controlling my life.
This is my identity. From page one of Genesis to the last page of Revelation, this is my identity: There is a God. And I am not him.
Be a sinner, and sin boldy. But believe more boldy that Christ is victor. Martin Luther
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Esther and Birth Pains
I've always been intrigued by Esther. Someone introduced me to her story on a missions trip in high school, and verse 4:14 has always kind of stuck to me.
I've been looking at her story again lately, and it struck me yesterday that before Esther went before the king, she fasted (which I'm assuming went hand in hand with prayer, as in other places in the OT) for three days. It is this fasting and praying that allowed her to go with confidence and say "If I perish, I perish." She had confidence that when she laid aside her plans and attended to God, he would instruct her path, and if she did so, then whatever happened was up to God.
I've realized that I have been trusting others' judgment of me to define me: either negatively or positively. Lately, I'm finding myself dismissing my calls to leadership because it doesn't look like other people's. To trust God's call instead of measuring it against others' is proving quite challenging. I know I want to do this (meaning discerning the intersection of leadership/ministry and work in my life) wisely and that requires listening to the wisdom of others. But I know there comes a point where listening to others is not listening to God. So I'm trying to pray for wisdom and mentors and patience (if you could help me do that, I would very, very much appreciate that).
She also didn't do anything rash. First, she approached the king for the first time after the three days of fasting. She didn't present her request then, but instead invited him to dinner. He came. She did not ask then, either, but instead invited him to dinner a second time. That was when she asked him to spare her people.
There are passions in my heart that God is igniting lately. They've always been there, but this is the first time that I've really ever thought anything of them. I think part of what helped me actually recognize God's call of leadership at IVLI was that for that whole month, we were learning what it meant to be a leader, and even though I doubted that I had anything to offer, nothing I was learning seemed "forbidden" to me; in fact, everything I was learning was everything that I had been pursuing since high school. It's almost like I finally had permission to pursue those things. So now the doors are open: IV staff, IFES staff, IHOP staff...the possibilities of what God could do with my life are there. No longer do I feel like the only thing I have to offer is my scientific ability (which I don't feel I have much of anyway). Science is cool, and I've always known this, but when I was pondering grad school, I didn't want to get a PhD and be forced to be a professor. I didn't necessarily want that but it was the only option I saw, and it made sense and it wasn't a bad choice, it could even have been a good one. So now that these things, these ministry opportunities exist as valid possibilities for me, I want to run after them! Oh, I want to run after them. But I know that I'm not ready for them. I have a lot to learn and a lot to sort out before God before I do those things because if I don't, bad things could happen. So I'm trying to press into God while in grad school. Ha. Yay, another limit. So, before I go and leave grad school, I have to consider it carefully, with prayer and fasting and wisdom.
I've been looking at her story again lately, and it struck me yesterday that before Esther went before the king, she fasted (which I'm assuming went hand in hand with prayer, as in other places in the OT) for three days. It is this fasting and praying that allowed her to go with confidence and say "If I perish, I perish." She had confidence that when she laid aside her plans and attended to God, he would instruct her path, and if she did so, then whatever happened was up to God.
I've realized that I have been trusting others' judgment of me to define me: either negatively or positively. Lately, I'm finding myself dismissing my calls to leadership because it doesn't look like other people's. To trust God's call instead of measuring it against others' is proving quite challenging. I know I want to do this (meaning discerning the intersection of leadership/ministry and work in my life) wisely and that requires listening to the wisdom of others. But I know there comes a point where listening to others is not listening to God. So I'm trying to pray for wisdom and mentors and patience (if you could help me do that, I would very, very much appreciate that).
She also didn't do anything rash. First, she approached the king for the first time after the three days of fasting. She didn't present her request then, but instead invited him to dinner. He came. She did not ask then, either, but instead invited him to dinner a second time. That was when she asked him to spare her people.
There are passions in my heart that God is igniting lately. They've always been there, but this is the first time that I've really ever thought anything of them. I think part of what helped me actually recognize God's call of leadership at IVLI was that for that whole month, we were learning what it meant to be a leader, and even though I doubted that I had anything to offer, nothing I was learning seemed "forbidden" to me; in fact, everything I was learning was everything that I had been pursuing since high school. It's almost like I finally had permission to pursue those things. So now the doors are open: IV staff, IFES staff, IHOP staff...the possibilities of what God could do with my life are there. No longer do I feel like the only thing I have to offer is my scientific ability (which I don't feel I have much of anyway). Science is cool, and I've always known this, but when I was pondering grad school, I didn't want to get a PhD and be forced to be a professor. I didn't necessarily want that but it was the only option I saw, and it made sense and it wasn't a bad choice, it could even have been a good one. So now that these things, these ministry opportunities exist as valid possibilities for me, I want to run after them! Oh, I want to run after them. But I know that I'm not ready for them. I have a lot to learn and a lot to sort out before God before I do those things because if I don't, bad things could happen. So I'm trying to press into God while in grad school. Ha. Yay, another limit. So, before I go and leave grad school, I have to consider it carefully, with prayer and fasting and wisdom.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Almost...
I went to a jeweler today.
I was shaking and I'm sure that my face was on fire, but I actually walked up to the counter at Kay Jeweler's and asked about rings.
I've been looking in standard department store racks for months and months, but nothing fit. I was in the mall today, walked a couple yards past Kay's, prayed a quick prayer, and turned around and marched up to the counter.
I spent a hesitant but enjoyable 20-30 minutes trying on rings (with a spunky Christian saleslady whom I hope to talk to again). I found one that I liked, but it wasn't THE ring.
So I left without a ring, but I still really, actually went into and talked to a jeweler today. (They did, however, first check that I was 18. I politely responded that yes, I'm 22. HA!)
I can't wait to try another jeweler next week. ^.^
I was shaking and I'm sure that my face was on fire, but I actually walked up to the counter at Kay Jeweler's and asked about rings.
I've been looking in standard department store racks for months and months, but nothing fit. I was in the mall today, walked a couple yards past Kay's, prayed a quick prayer, and turned around and marched up to the counter.
I spent a hesitant but enjoyable 20-30 minutes trying on rings (with a spunky Christian saleslady whom I hope to talk to again). I found one that I liked, but it wasn't THE ring.
So I left without a ring, but I still really, actually went into and talked to a jeweler today. (They did, however, first check that I was 18. I politely responded that yes, I'm 22. HA!)
I can't wait to try another jeweler next week. ^.^
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Patience
Love is patient. -1 Cor 13:4a
Endure patiently.-Rev 3:10
I really don't want to.
This is hard.
Science will be good for my patience.
Rawr.
Endure patiently.-Rev 3:10
I really don't want to.
This is hard.
Science will be good for my patience.
Rawr.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Niether Created nor Destroyed
Part I.
Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Same goes for energy. Momentum. Charge. All that. These must all be conserved.
This is a basic, fundamental law of science that anyone who has ever taken a junior high science class knows. It is the basis for everything a scientist studies, that I am working with as a graduate student (conservation of spin!). You can't make matter out of nothing, and it doesn't just disappear; you can take carbon and oxygen and make carbon monoxide, but it doesn't ever become nitrogen and hydrogen. You can take potential energy and transform it into kinetic energy, mechanical energy, and back, but that's it. You can only convert matter and energy.
Genesis 1:1 (and echoed in John 1) In the beginning, God--
In the beginning, God. In the beginning was God. Before he created anything, there was God. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Before anything in all creation, there was God, and he can neither be created nor destroyed; he is the only "thing" that has any right to say that he wasn't created--he just was The most basic and fundamental law of science derives from WHO God IS.
(see Genesis 1:1, John 1:1, John 1:3)
Part II.
I was cleaning up a reaction, and I was muttering to myself about having to deal with the waste products, and thinking about how I've made all this (mildly) toxic crud, and it has be packed and shipping specially, and dumped somewhere "safe" away from us...
And then I realized: When God created, he didn't have any waste. He didn't have any waste! It has implications for how we handle our own behaviors in terms of what we produce, but the major implication (momentarily) is what it means for us as people: We are not waste products. No one is a waste product. It's not like God worked at making this one really great person and other people were just waste byproducts. NO! God created each and every single one of us, deliberately. Me. You.
Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Same goes for energy. Momentum. Charge. All that. These must all be conserved.
This is a basic, fundamental law of science that anyone who has ever taken a junior high science class knows. It is the basis for everything a scientist studies, that I am working with as a graduate student (conservation of spin!). You can't make matter out of nothing, and it doesn't just disappear; you can take carbon and oxygen and make carbon monoxide, but it doesn't ever become nitrogen and hydrogen. You can take potential energy and transform it into kinetic energy, mechanical energy, and back, but that's it. You can only convert matter and energy.
Genesis 1:1 (and echoed in John 1) In the beginning, God--
In the beginning, God. In the beginning was God. Before he created anything, there was God. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Before anything in all creation, there was God, and he can neither be created nor destroyed; he is the only "thing" that has any right to say that he wasn't created--he just was The most basic and fundamental law of science derives from WHO God IS.
(see Genesis 1:1, John 1:1, John 1:3)
Part II.
I was cleaning up a reaction, and I was muttering to myself about having to deal with the waste products, and thinking about how I've made all this (mildly) toxic crud, and it has be packed and shipping specially, and dumped somewhere "safe" away from us...
And then I realized: When God created, he didn't have any waste. He didn't have any waste! It has implications for how we handle our own behaviors in terms of what we produce, but the major implication (momentarily) is what it means for us as people: We are not waste products. No one is a waste product. It's not like God worked at making this one really great person and other people were just waste byproducts. NO! God created each and every single one of us, deliberately. Me. You.
Living to Die
Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. -Philippians 1:20-21
Whether by life or by death, Christ will be it--everything. Because my days are used by Christ for the work he has planned, which, by his Spirit, is/becomes my desire, and because dieing allows me to be with him, which my heart and soul cry out for.
Therefore, whether I die or I live, it doesn't matter. Either way, Christ is still being made known--getting the glory he deserves, the love he desires, and his people are able to be made new, and either way, Christ is still LORD.
Whether by life or by death, Christ will be it--everything. Because my days are used by Christ for the work he has planned, which, by his Spirit, is/becomes my desire, and because dieing allows me to be with him, which my heart and soul cry out for.
Therefore, whether I die or I live, it doesn't matter. Either way, Christ is still being made known--getting the glory he deserves, the love he desires, and his people are able to be made new, and either way, Christ is still LORD.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Sanctuary
noun
A sacred place, such as a church, in which fugitives formerly were immune to arrest.
Immunity to arrest afforded by a sanctuary.
A place of refuge or asylum.
"For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock." Psalm 27:5
But yet we sing, “Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary.” Prepare ME to be a sanctuary. Prepare me that I might be good enough for you. Now, sometimes that’s right. But yet, HE is our sanctuary. He is our sanctuary, where we run when the world is crashing in on us, when everyone is out to get us, we run to him and we have sanctuary in him!
He will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle. He will keep me safe in his dwelling.
Sanctuary.
A sacred place, such as a church, in which fugitives formerly were immune to arrest.
Immunity to arrest afforded by a sanctuary.
A place of refuge or asylum.
"For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock." Psalm 27:5
But yet we sing, “Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary.” Prepare ME to be a sanctuary. Prepare me that I might be good enough for you. Now, sometimes that’s right. But yet, HE is our sanctuary. He is our sanctuary, where we run when the world is crashing in on us, when everyone is out to get us, we run to him and we have sanctuary in him!
He will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle. He will keep me safe in his dwelling.
Sanctuary.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Desperate
I'm a grad student. I'm human. My life at present is learning the intersection of those things, and how grace is large enough for both.
I am attempting to learn what it means to follow Jesus radically. Which, I'm hoping, is a hard thing for anyone. Unfortunately, I'm also attempting to learn what it means to be a scientist, specifically at the graduate level, which, it seems, is hard for anyone.
But He has called me to both, at least for the time being. That might change in 5 months, or in 5 years. Or it may never. I don't know.
I am desperate for the understanding--the kind that sinks deep into your soul, into your bones, that grace is large enough for me. For I am human. Both following Jesus radically and pursuing academia demand that which is superhuman. I am human. Jesus, I need you.
I am attempting to learn what it means to follow Jesus radically. Which, I'm hoping, is a hard thing for anyone. Unfortunately, I'm also attempting to learn what it means to be a scientist, specifically at the graduate level, which, it seems, is hard for anyone.
But He has called me to both, at least for the time being. That might change in 5 months, or in 5 years. Or it may never. I don't know.
I am desperate for the understanding--the kind that sinks deep into your soul, into your bones, that grace is large enough for me. For I am human. Both following Jesus radically and pursuing academia demand that which is superhuman. I am human. Jesus, I need you.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Too Sacred?
"All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags." (Isaiah 64:6)
We have defiled ourselves. We have stained ourselves and made ourselves unclean, and yet we act so righteous...
"All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people....who say, 'Keep away; don't come near me, for I am too sacred for you!'" (Isaiah 65:2,5)
Keep away...I am too sacred for you. Too sacred for You. Too sacred for You?
Oh LORD, what have we done?
We have defiled ourselves. We have stained ourselves and made ourselves unclean, and yet we act so righteous...
"All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people....who say, 'Keep away; don't come near me, for I am too sacred for you!'" (Isaiah 65:2,5)
Keep away...I am too sacred for you. Too sacred for You. Too sacred for You?
Oh LORD, what have we done?
Friday, January 01, 2010
Urbana 2009 sans detail
My well. He came to my well.
They'll know we are Christians by our love. Not our facebook profiles.
Worship out of truth.
We haven't been given an idiot-proof map. We need to trust. And even if we had, we'd still screw it up.
Praise defeats the evil one.
Sinned? Flee to him.
Prayers are not about getting answers.
If we can be challenged to appreciate other ethnic groups' worship style, why not be challenged to appreciate other styles within our own white worship style? CCM (ie, Hillsong), country, rap, gospel, metal, rock.
Limits.
Dancing shoes.
They'll know we are Christians by our love. Not our facebook profiles.
Worship out of truth.
We haven't been given an idiot-proof map. We need to trust. And even if we had, we'd still screw it up.
Praise defeats the evil one.
Sinned? Flee to him.
Prayers are not about getting answers.
If we can be challenged to appreciate other ethnic groups' worship style, why not be challenged to appreciate other styles within our own white worship style? CCM (ie, Hillsong), country, rap, gospel, metal, rock.
Limits.
Dancing shoes.
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